On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 08:44:36 -0700, BGB wrote:> GCC showed up in various forms (such as DJGPP, and later Cygwin and> MinGW), and in not much time, most previously non-free compilers (MSVC,> Watcom, ...) became freely available as well.>> if not for GCC, maybe compilers would tend to still cost money?> either that, or maybe this trend was inevitable?

It was. The software market was (and is) unregulated. The big software
vendors were able to fund incredibly cost-intensive compiler
development form sales of other, far less expensive to develop,
software and services.

This started a race to the bottom and, in the end, destroyed the whole
market of compilers with all the compiler vendors who were not quick
enough to diversify their business. Those who did, walked away anyway.
Why would you keep an unprofitable department? You cannot yearn
anything for compilers now.

Consequently, there is no significant investments in compiler and
language research, of which effect the author of the article observed
as a "plateau." There is no mystery in it, no market means no
progress. Academic research very soon became irrelevant without an
input from the field, without industry hungry for fresh compiler
developers. So, here we are.

Was GCC responsible for that? No, its role was rather positive, to keep
some least diversity of compilers, to serve as an epitaph on the
tombstone...